Best Practices for Contact-Based Marketing

Hear ye, hear ye: the people demand personalized buying experiences! A recent McKinsey study found that 71% of consumers expected companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% got frustrated when it didn’t happen.

We say, give the people what they want.

Traditional account-based marketing (ABM) can only take you so far by identifying the companies to target. But what about the individuals behind those accounts? That’s where contact-based marketing (CBM) shines. It lets you drill down to the decision-makers themselves, layering precision, context, and customization to create more impactful marketing programs.  

It's the difference between knowing "someone at Acme Corp visited your pricing page" and knowing "Sarah, the VP of Engineering at Acme Corp, spent 8 minutes on your security features page yesterday and downloaded your compliance guide."

Success, of course, hinges on how well you execute. Let’s walk through some best practices.

Best practice #1: Align sales and marketing around a shared contact strategy

Before launching any contact-based marketing initiative, get your GTM teams on the same page. The days of marketing throwing leads over the wall to sales are over—this approach demands tight coordination.

Sales and marketing need to agree on:

• Who the ideal contacts are (based on persona, role, seniority, company size)
• What qualifies a contact as engaged or ready for sales outreach
• How leads are handed off between teams and when
• What happens after first contact—the follow-up sequence and cadence

A shared playbook ensures your messaging stays consistent, your follow-up is timely, and your highest-intent contacts don't fall through the cracks because someone assumed the other team was handling it.

Best practice #2: Use intent signals to prioritize outreach

One of the biggest advantages of contact-based marketing is the ability to act on real-time behavior. Instead of guessing who might be interested, you can see exactly which contacts are showing buying signals.

Use intent data to:

• Identify when a contact is researching your category—even before they land on your site
• Detect engagement surges with your brand (multiple visits to pricing, demo requests, content downloads)
• Prioritize high-fit contacts for immediate outreach while they're actively evaluating solutions
• Understand where contacts are in their buyer journey so you can serve the right content at the right time

The key is acting fast. Intent signals have a short shelf life—a contact researching solutions today might sign with a competitor next week.

Best practice #3: Personalize outreach at scale

Each contact should feel like you know who they are and what they care about. This doesn't mean writing every email from scratch, but it does require thoughtful customization beyond "Hi [FIRST_NAME]."

Here's how to nail personalization without drowning in versions:

Create serendipity, not surveillance. Instead of saying "I saw you downloaded our guide on cloud cost optimization," try "Many VPs of Engineering are exploring ways to optimize cloud spend right now. Is this something your team is focused on?"

Customize based on context. Reference their industry challenges, company size, or role-specific pain points rather than specific behaviors.

Use dynamic content everywhere. Your email campaigns, ad copy, and landing pages should adapt messaging based on what you know about each contact.

Leverage templates with smart variables. Build message frameworks that automatically populate relevant details while maintaining a personal feel.

Best practice #4: Nurture contacts across channels

Effective contact-based marketing creates a connected experience across multiple touchpoints. One email isn't enough—you need orchestrated, multi-channel sequences that build relationships over time.

Create unified nurture paths across:

Email sequences that deliver value based on where the contact is in their buyer journey

Social retargeting with LinkedIn or Facebook ads that serve relevant content to engaged contacts

Direct mail or gifting for high-value prospects (a well-timed book or branded swag can break through inbox noise)

Coordinated sales outreach with warm, timely follow-ups from your SDR or AE team

The key is orchestration—each touchpoint should build on the last, creating momentum toward a conversation rather than random, disconnected outreach.

Best practice #5: Continuously enrich and clean your contact data

Contact-based marketing is only as good as the data fueling it. Garbage in, garbage out—and nothing kills personalization faster than outdated contact information or irrelevant messaging.

Keep your contact records fresh by:

Regularly enriching with third-party data sources to fill gaps in job titles, company information, and contact details

Removing outdated or duplicate contacts that waste budget and skew performance metrics

Verifying email addresses and phone numbers before launching outreach campaigns

Updating job changes and company moves so you're not pitching to people who left six months ago

Clean data improves deliverability, reduces wasted spend, and ensures your carefully crafted messages actually reach the right people.

Best practice #6: Track engagement at the contact level

Traditional marketing focuses on account-level metrics, but contact-based marketing demands a more granular view. You need to understand individual engagement patterns to optimize your approach.

Track key contact-level metrics:

• Who opened, clicked, or engaged with specific content
• Which contacts are progressing through your funnel stages
• Where individual contacts are getting stuck or dropping off
• Engagement velocity—how quickly contacts move from awareness to consideration

This granular data reveals which campaigns resonate with your audience and which contacts deserve more aggressive pursuit versus those who need more nurturing.

Best practice #7: Respect consent and privacy regulations

Contact-based marketing thrives on precise targeting, but it must be executed ethically and legally. With regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and CAN-SPAM, compliance isn't optional.

Stay on the right side of privacy laws by:

Gaining explicit consent where required and maintaining clear records of how you obtained contact information

Providing easy opt-out mechanisms in every communication and honoring unsubscribe requests immediately

Using reputable data providers and vetting your contact sources to ensure they follow proper consent practices

Being transparent about data usage and giving contacts control over their information

Building trust through ethical data practices isn't just about avoiding fines—it's about creating sustainable relationships with your prospects.

Make contact-based marketing your competitive edge

The marketers who adopt contact-based marketing will reach decision-makers directly, waste less budget on irrelevant audiences, and build genuine relationships instead of just generating more noise. In other words, a huge competitive advantage.

Vector makes this transition seamless. We transform anonymous website visits into names and contact details, revealing exactly who's showing interest in your solution—and when they're most likely to convert.

With Vector,’s CBM platform, you can:

• Automatically uncover who's on your site and who’s doing relevant research off your site
• See which stage of the buyer’s journey contacts are in and trigger marketing plays accordingly
• Automatically funnel the right contacts into your paid ads audiences to run personalized campaigns that actually resonate

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